The source specified that the door to the first entrance to the Federal Security Service building was set on fire at around 3:00 a.m. Pavlensky was detained by officials from the commandant’s service and was handed over to police officers in the Meshchansky police office.
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St. Petersburg artist Peter Pavlensky arrives at a police station in Moscow for interrogation in November 2013.
In previous shocking performances to protest against a lack of civil freedoms, Pavlensky has sewn up his lips and cut off part of his earlobe.
Vladimir Romensky, a reporter invited to witness the action for the independent Dozhd TV, said Pavlensky walked right up to the door of the hulking building, doused it in fuel, and lit it with a lighter. The two journalists who filmed the performance were taken in for questioning, but have since been released. They reportedly gave statements to the police and are now listed in the case as witnesses.
Explaining the concept of the performance in the blurb of the video he circulated online, Pavlensky wrote: “Military courts liquidate any manifestation of free will. Terrorism can only exist due to the animal instinct of fear”. An unconditional defensive reflex forces a person to go against this instinct. “And life is worth starting a fight for”.
A member of the Russian anti-Putin punk protest group Pussy Riot Nadezhda Tolokonnikova also commented on the performance on Facebook.
In February 2014 Mr Pavelnsky created a small replica of Kiev’s Maidan revolution on the streets of St Petersburg, setting fire to a stack of tires and raising a Ukrainian flag while raising a din by beating on sheets of metal.
During his trial, Pavlensky has maintained a vow of silence in the courtroom.
In 2013, Pavlensky nailed his scrotum to the cobblestone in Red Square on Russian Police Day to protest police control.
Pavlensky’s lawyer said the FSB questioned the activist and asked him whether he had meant to kill anyone.
When prosecutors tried to force him to undergo psychiatric testing, the artist stripped naked, mounted the wall of a famous psychiatric institute and lopped-off part of his ear lobe. On social media, a few have praised his challenge to the powerful FSB as “courageous” and “heroic” – a fellow performance artist of Pussy Riot fame proclaimed Pavlensky the “mind, conscience and balls” of the age.
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In a video of the protest published on Vimeo, Pavlensky stands motionless, looking straight into the camera as flames lick at the doorway of the iconic Lubyanka building behind him.
